


Hold On, Let Go

by shealynn88



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biting, Blood, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Flogging, M/M, No Sex, Painplay, S&M, bamf cain, guilt ridden John Winchester, john can't use his words, masochist john winchester, sadist cain, shows john in a sympathetic light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:40:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26225803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: Cain is a dom at a small club John visits for a case.  There's no reason to go back, but John goes anyway.Cain takes John’s chin in his fingers again. His voice is cold. “Get over there and hold the bar, or get dressed and get out.”For spn rarepairs bingo, Cain/John
Relationships: Cain/John Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	Hold On, Let Go

**Author's Note:**

> Incredible, fabulous, wonderful art by bees0are0awesome on Tumblr.

He’d never planned for it. The hunt was the thing. He had his boys to worry about - to _prepare._

So it only made sense that a job would bring him there the first time. To that unassuming man, unperturbed by the sounds of pain and pleasure coming from the two rooms behind him. 

There was something about him from the moment John laid eyes on him. Ageless. Inscrutable. Effortlessly commanding. 

For the first time in...he didn’t even know how long, John didn’t have iron control of the situation. Sure, he’d been outnumbered, outgunned before. He'd kept his head,then. Knew his exit plan—the priority was always making the kill, making it out, making it back to his boys. 

This was different. It wasn’t life and death.

“What is this?” he’d asked the man. _Cain._

“Just a place for people to lay down their burdens.”

John had laughed uncomfortably. He’d felt the truth of it in his bones.

* * *

He leaves the boys with Bobby, can’t look him in the eye when he says, “Won’t be long. Got some loose ends to tie up.”

He drives three hours on the highway, trying not to examine why. Just knowing that he needs to get back there. That he’s left something important undone.

He arrives late and the lights are flickering out down the strip as businesses close down.

* * *

“You ever done this before?”

John laughs. There’s no humor in it. “No.”

He wonders briefly what Mary would think. Then realizes there’s not a single thing he’s done since she died that she’d approve of. Or even begin to understand. 

The pain of it almost sends him back out the door. The promise of punishment holds him where he stands.

“John?” Cain’s voice is gentle. “You have to understand, this is a process. An agreement. It’s all consensual. It’s important that you tell me what you want.”

John feels his jaw tighten. His eyes narrow. “I’m not gonna _beg_ ,” he sneers. 

Cain smiles. There’s an edge to it. A glint in his eye. 

John shivers. 

“That’s fine,” Cain soothes, irritatingly unaffected. “I want what you want, John. I want to release you from that weight on your shoulders. I want to _free_ you...I just need your help to do that.” He looks at John from under thick eyebrows, eyes impossibly dark in the shadows. “I’m a lot of things but I’m not a mind reader.”

He wants to say something. Absolutely can’t ask. Can’t say, _make me. Don’t_ ask _me. Make me. I don’t want to have to plan my exits tonight._

Cain sighs, runs a hand through thick, greying hair. “I should send you away, you know.”

“Should.” John smiles, victorious. He knows all about _shoulds_. 

Cain steps close and John closes his eyes, jumps a little when Cain cups his cheek. “Yes,” Cain whispers. “But I think you _need_ this, John. And I want to give it to you.” His hand slides slowly into John’s hair and then tightens, slow enough that John can control himself. He catalogues the ways he’d turn the tables, but doesn’t. As the hand tightens he feels the tension—ever present—begin to leave his shoulders. 

“I need a word,” Cain says softly, tilting John’s head back. “One you’ll only use if you need me to stop. Understand?”

It takes a minute. He feels drugged. Loose. It’s better than the whiskey he’s been drinking like water. “Walker,” he finally says. 

“Walker. Say it, and I’ll stop everything. It’s all up to you.” The hand tightens again, painful now, and Cain draws him forward, whispers warm against his ear. “Until then, you belong to me.”

He guides John back into a room by his hair. The place is quiet. The other room is empty. John’s heart is threatening to beat out of his chest. 

“ _Stay_ ,” Cain says, and John doesn’t feel his typical need to resist. He stays. He has a word. He has a way out anytime he wants it. 

He won’t want it. 

“Take off your clothes, however you’re comfortable.”

John stands stiffly and watches Cain. His jaw is clamped tight, his muscles straining. His body refuses to obey such a gentle, offhand request. 

Cain stalks over and takes his chin in hand, brutal. He bites each word. “Jacket. Shirt. Pants. _Off_.”

John’s jaw loosens, his back eases. He strips down to his boxers. 

Cain stalks around him. “What do you need?” He asks softly. Musing. 

John feels the man’s fingers brush his shoulder, his rib, his spine. There are scars there, he knows. The touch is gentle; he hates it. 

A blow lands under his ribs, takes the breath out of him, but he refuses to fall. This, at least, he understands. 

Then fingers brush through his hair, tighten at the back of his neck, and his breath comes a little faster. Something tightens in his chest. This isn’t something he knows, this anxiety of not knowing—not knowing what’s happening, not knowing what he wants. 

Cain steps around and stands in front of him. “I’m going to hurt you, John. You’re going to kneel there,” he gestures to a bench with a padded platform, a bar above it, “You’re going to hold onto that bar for me. If you let go, we’re done. Do you understand?”

John tracks him with his eyes, jaw rigid, grinding. He can feel it but he can’t stop it. 

“Go on,” Cain says. 

John can’t move. He’s frozen to the spot. 

Cain sighs and then moves. He’s fast. Faster than John has seen in a long time. Cain sweeps the back of his legs and is standing calmly in front of him again as he lands hard on his knees. Then Cain bends toward him, eyes narrowed. They stare at each other for a long moment. 

Cain takes John’s chin in his fingers again. His voice is cold. “Get over there and hold the bar, or get dressed and get out.” 

John closes his eyes for a moment. There’s a war inside him. Something that wants to fight, just on principle. Something that misses the certainty of following. How easy it was, taking orders. 

God, he’s so sick of being the strong one. 

He forces himself to his feet and goes to the bench. Kneels. Holds. 

Waits. 

Cain moves behind him, drawers open and close. There are sounds of leather, of metal, a hiss of rope.

John is on high alert when Cain is done and turns back toward him. John can _feel_ him moving closer, in against his back, soft breath coming closer, cheek against his ear.

“Do you have something to say?” Cain whispers. 

John can’t get his limbs to behave. He doesn’t want to. “Fuck off,” he says, and his voice is low. Rough. 

The flogger lands heavy across his shoulder, down his body, stings as the tips graze his ass. He hisses, tenses, goes lax again. 

The next four land heavy and intense, his only warning the sound of the flogger parting the air. The strikes leave his skin burning fresh behind them.

The blows continue and he moves beyond words. It hurts in a distant, rhythmic way. Every strike is one he’s owed, never been allowed to take because he’s had to get back to his boys. He’s all they have. And he deserves this for them, too. He knows he’s doing it all wrong, raising them without a mother or a home, raising them like he’s training an army. But he doesn’t know any other way. 

Every strike is fire, now. Another hit against skin already inflamed, swollen.

It doesn’t stop until he feels something slice down along his ribs and the sting is followed by the sensation of blood. Sluggish, nothing deep. A very familiar feeling. 

A sigh behind him. “I have to stop, John.”

He opens his mouth and the sound he makes is high and pitiful. A ghost in mourning. 

Hot breath at his neck again. Fabric burning against the sudden screaming throb of his back. “Shhh,” comes Cain’s voice, low and soothing. 

Strong fingers trail fire across his shoulder, down his spine, and John flinches, whimpers. 

“You look good this way,” Cain tells him, voice low and even. “John.”

“Mm?”

“Can I mark you?” Cain asks, and John doesn’t know what to say. 

Not until Cain’s breath is hot against the cap of his shoulder, and then broad and damp, and he feels just the barest hint of teeth. How many times has he felt teeth tear his skin? How many times has he feared for his life, how many times has he barely escaped? And he wonders, would he _choose_ that? His own choice, knowing he can stop Cain with a word. 

Which makes the choice one of how far he can push himself. A way to prove that he can, he _will._ He’ll choose the hard way every time, as long as it gets him closer to the demon. As long as it gets him home to his boys. 

“Yes,” he says, and his voice is rough but doesn’t waver. 

Cain bites relentlessly, and John screams. There’s the burn of his abused skin and then the slow break under blunt teeth, the sensation of blood flowing and cooling rapidly as it rolls down his chest and back, slides into the divot of his armpit. 

“Thank you, John,” Cain says. Smooth as silk. His hands slide up against John’s knuckles, working at his fingers until John remembers how to let go. He slumps forward because there’s no-where he has to be. 

Everything burns, stabs, stings; he feels alive. As if he’s chosen it. As if there was another choice and he faced it. 

Cain wraps him in a blanket, not seeming to notice or care about the blood, and pulls John against him. “Take this,” he says softly, and John has a glass of water in his hand. “Painkiller?”

John shakes his head and takes a drink. He’s desperately thirsty all of a sudden. 

Cain smiles down at him and there’s blood in his beard, teeth shining white behind it. “I thought not. Did you get what you needed?”

John feels every inch of his body. He has time to explore it here, leaning against someone else. He can’t imagine allowing this with anyone else. It’s too much. Too revealing, too intimate. They all pretend they’re fine, but not one of them is. You can’t go showing your belly in Hunter circles. They either gut you or lay down with you, and neither of those is really acceptable. 

Did he get what he needed?

“What do I owe you?” he asks instead of answering.

“I didn’t do that for money, John. Hold still.”

John sits there stiffly, Cain’s hands burning through the blanket, supporting but not pushing.

The fog in his head clears slowly. John thinks over what Cain did. How easily he handled him. How he seemed to _know_...too much. “You really took me down easy, there,” John says, mentally calculating whether to go for the weapons in his jacket or in the drawers on the other side of the room. “Do I gotta worry?”

“About me?” Cain asks, amusement tingeing his voice. “No. I’m retired.”

John nods, relaxing minutely. “Hunter?” It makes sense. Like calling to like, and all that.

Cain smiles. “Mm. Something like that.”

* * *

There’s a new mark on John’s shoulder when he goes back to Bobby’s. Teeth marks so deep they’ll ache for years and years. He tells the boys it was another monster, that he took care of it, that it won’t hurt them. They nod, eyes wide.

* * *

He never knows how right he is. How incredibly wrong. 

* * *

END

* * *


End file.
